Do Not Try to Get Your Kid Into the Pop Culture You Like
Read all of GQ’s Father’s Day 2025 stories, including our series of counterintuitive advice for dads, here.
To be clear: Nothing pop culture–related that happens to your kid before they turn five actually matters, unless you, like, tattoo “BEASTIE BOYS” on their little baby arm or something. Technically, the first movie my kid ever “saw” is the 1996 rated-R-for-pervasive-foul-language film version of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, because they were four days old and had fallen asleep and I didn’t dare move them. They do not remember this. It’s also fine to buy them, say, a Boygenius onesie if your favorite band is Boygenius. It’ll be fun later on when your partner asks you how the day went and you get to say, “Well, the baby shit so much that it came out of the leg, arm, and neck holes of their Boygenius onesie.” That’s what a onesie is for. It’s for shitting in, and either they grow out of it or it gets to where it’s been shitted-in too many times and you throw it away and whisper a silent apology to Phoebe Bridgers as you do so.
And go ahead and play whatever music you want for your baby. But don’t be that guy who’s like “I put on the new Turnstile, and Brayden really started bopping around—I think we got a little punk rocker!” No, you don’t. Shut up. Your baby likes to bop around and mirror your facial expressions. Your baby does not like Turnstile. You cannot program your baby to like Turnstile any more than you can program him to like the Baltimore Orioles by putting a little Orioles hat on him because your baby does not understand that there is a band called Turnstile or that the Baltimore Orioles exist and and anything that seems true about him right now will almost certainly later be proven false. The minute they turn five your child’s brain will essentially hard-reboot, and they will start having opinions and not liking the dumb things you’ve tried to make them like. This is part of a broader and essentially lifelong process of differentiation—but when it comes to media consumption it accelerates precipitously once they start making friends their own age.
Next: As they get older and they become part of the theoretical target audience for the music and books and movies that were crucially important to you at that age, you will still feel a powerful temptation to try and re-create your initial encounters with what you think of as “the good shit” by passing it on to them. Do not do this. Do not even attempt to do this. Leave the room if you feel yourself starting to do this. Go reread, if necessary, the instructive Onion article “Cool Dad Raising Daughter On Media That Will Put Her Entirely Out of Touch With Her Generation.” Your job is to teach them self-respect, kindness, and critical thinking. You are allowed to answer any question you are asked about pop culture, and you are allowed to strongly imply, if the chance to do so arises, that any given Republican politician is evil. But that’s it. Other than that, just shut up and let them watch terrible movies and listen to terrible music, because your job is to make them feel empowered to make their own choices and follow their own preferences without needing the approval of an adult authority figure. This has all kinds of potential benefits beyond mere pop-cultural taste, but first and foremost what you’ll get in return is a child who, chances are, likes good shit, because they’ve never been forced to watch or listen to someone else’s idea of “the good shit” against their will.
They will probably also like new bands that are derivative of older, better bands that you know about and present-day movies that you know to be pale imitations of older, better movies that you have seen. You will be tempted to point them to the source material. Do not, my dude. Once, in the ’90s, I played my father a tape of an album I was into by the very Beatles-derivative early ’90s alternative-rock band Jellyfish, and my dad’s review was a scornful “Why don’t you just listen to the fucking Beatles?” As a result it was years before I listened in any non-passive way to the fucking Beatles, who as it turns out really were better than Jellyfish—but in that moment, I was made to feel stupid for liking a thing I liked and to question my own barometer for what constituted good music, and my father robbed himself of an opportunity to connect with and validate his idiot son, a lose-lose. (Dad: It’s fine. I’m fine. All is forgiven, to quote the title of the best song on the second Jellyfish album—which, for what it’s worth, sounds more like Queen.)
